Hello all, and hope that the summer is finally reaching you wherever you may be !
I wanted to set up this series of Blog posts (coming over the next few days) to showcase and highlight the impressive work that’s being done my our Gender Studies (applied) MLitt and MSc students on their Research Placement project (GNDPP04). We’ve had a really interesting and varied set of placements this year with our continuing partners in industry, education and the third sector including: Creative Stirling, the National Library of Scotland (Moving Image Archive), Glasgow Women’s Library and many others…
Our students work with their allocated placement/academic and apply their learning from the programme (and their own bespoke set of skills) to projects that are wider ranging (archival, marketing, textual and semiotic analysis, programming and curation) and produce end products alongside their academic writing that extend to film programmes and workshops, printed Zines, digital film archives and podcasts.
I hope you’ll find some of these projects interesting and if you want to know more about them – please don’t hesitate to email me and I can put you in touch with the student researchers themselves.
Second up is Amelia Armit’s Research Placement with the Moving Image Archive/National Library of Scotland working on a project to celebrate the Glasgow Media Co-op: https://mediaco-op.net/news/media-co-op-celebrates-20-years-since-we-stared-in-2004/ Amelia worked with the media co-op as a client of the Moving Image Archive to curate a package of films from their own archive, digitised and now accessible at the Moving Image Archive itself based in Kelvinhall. Alongside this Amelia also produced a celebration Zine which was circulated at the 2- year anniversary event in June. Some images from the event and Amelia’s final e-Zine can be see below:
Hello all, and hope that the summer is finally reaching you wherever you may be !
I wanted to set up this series of Blog posts (coming over the next few days) to showcase and highlight the impressive work that’s being done my our Gender Studies (applied) MLitt and MSc students on their Research Placement project (GNDPP04). We’ve had a really interesting and varied set of placements this year with our continuing partners in industry, education and the third sector including: Creative Stirling, the National Library of Scotland (Moving Image Archive), Glasgow Women’s Library and many others…
Our students work with their allocated placement/academic and apply their learning from the programme (and their own bespoke set of skills) to projects that are wider ranging (archival, marketing, textual and semiotic analysis, programming and curation) and produce end products alongside their academic writing that extend to film programmes and workshops, printed Zines, digital film archives and podcasts.
I hope you’ll find some of these projects interesting and if you want to know more about them – please don’t hesitate to email me and I can put you in touch with the student researchers themselves.
First up is an academic research project partnership between our GS student Alba McVicar Reyes and Dr Fiona Noble (Lecturer in SPLAS) on a project investigating and foregrounding women’s voices in the Spanish media/streaming landscape.
Below is Alba’s blog entry on the project, and also included is the project’s final edit of the podcast discussion between Alba and Fiona Noble. Enjoy !
Darren
Over the past five months, I have had the absolute pleasure of working with Dr Fiona Noble as part of the Research Placement opportunity available through the MSc in Gender Studies, at the University of Stirling. Helping with Fiona’s research, which is anchored in the TV show ‘Nacho’ and the voices of the foregrounding women and showrunners in the Spanish media landscape, was one of many options, yet it immediately called out to me as the Placement I wanted to do. She was looking for a film/media student, with an interest in Feminist & Queer Discourse and a desire to engage with academic discussions of televisual media.
As an added bonus, I also happen to be Spanish, speak Spanish fluently, and have grown up alongside Spanish culture and the revolution that is currently reshaping the audiovisual production of Spanish fiction. So, I immediately reached out to Dr Darren Elliott-Smith (the Director of the Gender Studies programme) to let him know that I was more than willing to partake in Fiona’s research and to hear firsthand what it was Fiona needed. Quite candidly, both Fiona and Darren stressed the fact that they did not want me to feel overworked or like I was to bear most of the grunt work. As such, Fiona expected a spreadsheet which would act as a sort of catalogue, simply containing a couple of relevant articles and interviews centring the project’s three key showrunners and ‘Nacho’. However, my initial, superficial research quickly led me to discover a wealth of different sources which could vouch for these women’s groundbreaking careers and how they led the Spanish audiovisual revolution. From video and published interviews to social media posts, to online marketing strategies and even Undergraduate and Postgraduate theses: altogether, this collection of information reveals a bigger picture, through which we can glimpse each woman’s life, career and the strategic deployment of their artistic voice.
The project soon grew to include a database, to which the spreadsheet is the key. The idea is that Fiona can read through the spreadsheet, find useful ideas through each source’s quotes and buzzwords, and then locate the relevant file in the database by looking at the ‘File Name’ and ‘Location (in database)’ columns. The files’ names act as ‘serial numbers’, which label each file according to its relevant showrunner, media and production company (as well as its type and when/where it was published) and within each file, the relevant quotes are also highlighted and numbered, easily accessible.
In short, I provided Fiona with a deeper understanding of these key women’s careers and work until now, as is reflected through the Spanish online sphere, mainstream media and academic discussions, thus saving her the time it would have taken her to do all this preliminary research before writing up her article on ‘Nacho’. All of this knowledge, combined, is presented through the database/spreadsheet. And what I take from this project is thus reflected through my own voice, presented through the project’s creative outputs: a reflective podcast and this very blog post. This opportunity made me think, and learn, a lot. Through Fiona, the showrunners and this project, I rediscovered my pride in Spanish art and fiction, which I had somewhat lost after moving to Stirling in 2019. Engrossed in studying the Anglophonic audiovisual world, I lost sight of the revolution I began to witness in the summer of 2017 when my high school friends forced me to stay up all night long to binge-watch the first season of ‘La Casa de Papel’. Little did 16-year-old me know that the national reception this show received would be echoed internationally for years to come and change the production of Spanish TV and film, and my academic career, forever.
Now, with a better understanding of the industry and a showrunner’s job, as well as a keen interest in deploying Critical Feminist & Queer Theory, I am more aware of the importance of acknowledging the artistry that is emerging from Spanish creatives. The technological and narrative techniques popularised by the showrunners’ stylistic choices, the rejection of the idea that ‘only men’s stories sell’, the rise in creative control held by women in professional production contexts… All of this (and more) is the promise of the revolution these showrunners bring on. Their voice, sonically and cinematically conveyed through the screen, ignites their work with a political significance, which is sorely needed in Spain and in the so-called Postfeminist Wave. Particularly, ‘Nacho’ deconstructs what is typically seen as the ultimate model for hegemonic, toxic ‘macho’ Spanish masculinity: Nacho Vidal, the iconic 1990s Spanish pornstar with the 25-centimetre penis. In ‘Nacho’, the pornstar’s persona is busted open, revealing to the audience both the ugly, brutal truth of trying to survive the porn/sex industry and the bittersweet, innately human nature of the pleasure that is addressed and commodified through it. With full credit to the voices and artistic prowess of the outstanding cast and crew who brought it to life.
So, to any future Gender Studies students who are presented with a similar opportunity, to partake in the programme’s Research Placement and who may feel quite apprehensive because of it, I say: jump right in! Read between the lines of your research’s/researcher’s needs, put yourself in their shoes and figure out what kind of research would help them the most. Be proactive, schedule meetings with them semi-regularly to update them on your progress, set reasonable deadlines for yourself and do your best to obey them. But above all else, you need to find what ignites your own passion and interest within your research. Think about what you can build on in the future, and find out why this research is meaningful to you. Remember that feedback is constructive, never personal, and take advantage of the process and the valuable experience it will bestow upon you. And quite frankly, regardless of the impact or scope of the research, if you can find the passion that drives you, you will find yourself producing the kind of research you would like to see taking up space in wider academic discussions. Become one of the academic voices whose meaningful discussions spark social change.
And be proud.
Good luck!
Alba McVicar Reyes
(she/her)
Take a listen below to the podcast discussion between Alba and Fiona on the project and on Nacho specifically:
Dear all – it’s been a while, but pleased to announce a forthcoming free event and screening in collaboration with the University of Stirling’s Queer Reading Group, and Creative Stirling on the 24 April 2024 4pm -7pm, @ Creative Stirling, King Street in Stirling City Centre.
Queer Appropriations: The Ethics of Queer Use as Re-Use
As part of the University of Stirling’s Queer Reading Group and in collaboration with Creative Stirling, this special event focuses on recent discussions and debates concerning Queer Appropriation, Cultural Borrowing and Re-Use as a methodology and survival strategy for LGBTQ+ subjects. Sara Ahmed’s recent text What’s The Use: On the Uses of Use (2018) considers ‘queer use as reuse’ (198) this concept will frame this event which involves a special free screening of Daisy Asquith’s found-footage, experimental, poetic montage documentary film Queerama (2017) which charts the historical representation of LGBTQ+ folk on film and TV in the UK.
This screening will be preceded by two short presentations from Darren Elliott-Smith on recent investigations into ethical uses of queer appropriation by LGBTQ+ Youtube communities (see the recent HBomberguy expose on Youtube and Plagiarism for an insight on this) and River Seager on Queer Fandom, and followed by a discussion of Ahmed’s work on ‘Queer Use’ (2018).
Dear all – welcome back to a new year and a new semester!
We’re getting back to face to face reality this year, and we’re delighted to announce that we’re running a short course in Horror with Creative Stirling/Made in Stirling that will be of interest to those who are fans of the genre, and of studying Horror from a Gender Studies or LGBTQ+ perspective. See below for details and please get in touch with me at Darren.elliott-smith@stir.ac.uk if you’d like further details.
Celluloid Chills: A Short Course in Horror (October-November)
£35.00 per person.
Join us at 44 King Street for this new four-week evening film course across October and November. Led by Dr. Darren Elliott-Smith (Programme Director of Gender Studies at the University of Stirling), this short taster course takes the form of clip-led discussion of significant directors, key films, analysis of hair-raising film techniques and will provide an introduction to the study of film language and style.
The course will be conducted in a sociable, relaxed and informal setting and includes reading materials, example clips and discussion-led learning with no previous Film or Media Studies knowledge needed. Anyone who is interested in horror cinema is welcome to attend.
Dear all – long time, long time… but we’re happy to be back in some form and relatively geared up for the return of semester 2021.
In the meantime – a date you all may want to keep free in your diaries, we are delighted to have been asked to connect up our Film Club screenings and our Gender Research Group work to Creative Stirling’s new season of film screenings across the coming year. First up we have a connection to the double bill of screening celebrating Queer Icon Marlene Dietrich:
We’re thrilled to announce film screenings happening this Semester in collaboration with the Communications, Media and Culture department at the University of Stirling. Across two weeks, we’ll be showcasing the work of queer and feminist screen icon Marlene Dietrich by screening two films she made with frequent collaborator Josef Von Sternberg – Morocco and Dishonoured.
The Foreign Legion marches into Mogador with booze and women in mind just as singer Amy Jolly (Marlene Dietrich) arrives from Paris to work at Lo Tinto’s cabaret. That night, insouciant legionnaire Tom Brown (Gary Cooper) catches her inimitably seductive, tuxedo-clad act. Both bruised by their past lives, the two edge cautiously into a no-strings relationship while being pursued by others. But Tom must leave on a perilous mission: is it too late for them?
This screening will feature an introduction discussing Dietrich’s position as a queer icon by Darren Elliott-Smith (Senior Lecturer in Film and Gender & Programme Director of Gender Studies).
During World War I, the Austrian Secret Service its most seductive agent to spy on the Russians. Her assignment is to expose two suspected infiltrators by flirting with them. Both men become infatuated with her.
This screening will feature an introduction discussing Dietrich’s complicated relationship with director Josef von Sternberg by Sam Warnock (Events Program Assistant at Creative Stirling).
Screenings will take place in 44 King Street’s Event Space and tickets are £6 for each film. You can book your place and find out more information on the films here.
For those of you unable to attend the Politics and Horror Conference set up by Madelyn Schoonover and/@ the University of Stirling, it was a really engaging conference with some excellent papers – we are looking to get a review of the conference set up soon, but in the meantime – here’s the programme list of contributors and a link to the Keynote Video Essay provided by Dr Darren Elliott-Smith entitled: ‘QueerWolves, and Wolf-Girlz and Were-Bears… Oh My !’
Abstract:
‘Queer-Wolves and Wolf-Girlz and Were-Bears, Oh My!’: Queering the Wolf in New Queer Horror Film and TV.
The horror film’s representation of the ‘Other’ has long been understood to be a symbolic representation of social ills, anxieties and unease. Non-normative sexuality is often chief among these concerns and the threat that queer, gay and lesbian sexualities pose to an ‘assumed heterosexual’ spectator. In my previous research (Queer Horror Film and Television (2016)) I have argued that the study of monstrous homosexuality in the horror film has also revealed the celebratory pleasures offered to queer, gay and lesbian viewers’ oppositional identification with the very same monsters that threaten the norm. Yet, the vast majority of such studies have to first make the leap of reading the symbolic homosexual potential of the films’ monsters; few consider the explicit presentation of gay villains and victims alike. In departing from the analysis of the ‘out’ queer monster as a symbol of heterosexual anxiety and fear, this study moves the discussion forward to focus instead on the anxieties within gay subcultures.
In particular, the emergence of the werewolf figure allows for both a celebration of the shared Otherness felt by marginalised sexualities via ‘hirsute empowerment’ or a ‘furry protest’, but also a complex negotiation of the shame felt in associations with such monstrousness. These range from: the emasculating stigma of the shameful feminine associations felt by the queer male subject, to complex re-configurations of masculine-femininity, menstruation and queer female desire as embodied in the ‘transforming’ werewolf.
This chapter also develops Barbara Creed’s (Phallic Panic! 2005) re-reading of Freud’s ‘Wolf Man’ case from The History of an Infantile Neurosis (1918) whereby she intimates that in ‘werewolf films the male body is rendered feminine and uncanny—animal hair sprouts, flesh changes shape…’. (151–2). It does this in relation to other queer interpretations of the Wolf Man case (Leo Bersani, 1993) and recent Queer Horror film and television works that feature the queer-identified werewolf such as satirical horror film and television titles as: The Curse of the Queerwolf (1987), I Was A Teenage WereBear! (2011), The Wolves of Wall Street (, 2002) and queer oriented Gothic soaps like Teen Wolf, True Blood and The Lair (2007-2009), and via more serious depictions of queer-wolf isolation and longing for companionship in The Wolves of Kromer (2000), Der Samurai (2014), and Good Manners (2017). This chapter will argue that the existence of the werewolf in the Queer Horror sub-genre is one that allows for a paradoxical celebration of repressed homosexuality; and a ludicrous disavowal of problematic gender tropes for the queer spectator.
The Living End (18, Gregg Araki 1992) with intro and post-screening discussion.
To celebrate the launch of Queer Studies in Dark Times module this year on the Gender Studies MLitt/MSc Programme we will be screening Gregg Araki’s cult New Queer Cinema film The Living End as the perfect post-Valentine’s anti-romance movie.
Described at the time by critics as ‘the Gay Thelma and Louise’ Araki’s film is imbued with the new-punk-aesthetic of the New Queer Cinema movement, whose nihilistic approach to film was brought on by the unresolved anger and trauma of the AIDS crisis. The film follows Jon (a film critic) and Luke (a hustler) who have both just found out they are HIV positive, and their raucous journey across the States in search of love and coming to terms with their new lives.
The screening will be introduced by Dr Darren Elliott-Smith (Senior Lecturer in Film and Gender) and will be followed by a discussion via Zoom.
Sign up to the Facebook Gender Studies Film Club Group to attend:
Deadline for submission of abstracts: Friday 29 January 2021.
Proposals are invited for contributions to an edited collection titled The Sex Scene, the first book to be published as part of Edinburgh University Press’s new “Screening Sex” book series.
Screening Sex: The Sex Scene is intended to serve as a primer for the series. Taking the “sex scene” as a critical starting point for the series, the book will be a critical exploration of the significance of the depiction of sex on screen and in sexual cultures. This volume seeks a range of essays that will collectively consider histories and controversies (screen, legal, censorial, critical), industrial contexts and labour (writing, directing, performing and editing), the mise-en-scène of the sex scene (content, aesthetics, representation) and temporality and approach (in genres, form and style).
We are working with a purposefully wide remit to encourage a diverse collection of essays from a diverse range of writers and are keen to encourage a broad interpretation of “sex scene” – it could apply as much to a specific scene in a film as to a geographical scene or place in time.
PROPOSAL SUBMISSION:
Chapters proposals should be submitted as a 300-400 word abstract to the editors Darren Kerr and Dr Donna Peberdy (screeningsex@gmail.com) by Friday 29 January 2021, using the subject line “The Sex Scene proposal”. Please include a proposed title and author bio (150 words). Acceptance notices will be sent out in February 2021. Completed chapters (5,000-6,000 words) will then be due Friday 3rd December 2021. Please feel free to email with any queries prior to the submission of abstracts.
A NOTE ON THE SCREENING SEX SERIES:
The series’ scope and approach encourages a broad range of critical, contextual and cultural methodologies relating to sex on screen, drawing on cross-disciplinary and inter-disciplinary research as well as encouraging intersectional observations and approaches. There will be a range of critical approaches covered across the series that will often be determined by theme proposed by the author/s. Approaches to queer theory, feminism and psychoanalysis will sit alongside genre studies, cultural studies and the social sciences. Besides analytical considerations of representational strategies, the series will also give space to examine the scope and change seen in industry practice, spanning production techniques, changing modes of exhibition and new strategies of distribution. The central argument throughout the series will be to address the importance of confronting, examining, challenging and re-framing social and cultural perceptions of sex in a meaningful and engaging way. While the series will include consideration of western, canonical, mainstream cinema, key features expected of the series will be to also account for non-western film cultures as well as marginal, alternative, underground, low-budget and independent films from a diverse range of voices, histories and material cultures beyond those that have been historically dominant. We are particularly keen to include previously unexplored/underexplored case studies. For more information, visit the Edinburgh University Press series page, read the proposal guidelines or contact Darren and Donna for more details.
For those that weren’t able to catch the video essay on the evening of the festival – here’s a direct link to watch it via Vimeo:
Here’s the blurb:
‘Pride and Pathology’: Queer Horror and Mental Anguish
This video essay brings together some of my recent works on zombie/monster theory and queer hauntology to consider how queer horror film depicts queer Otherness and tends to highlight the mental health implications of growing up queer. Zombie and undead narratives (The Cured, 2018, Otto; or, Up With Dead People (2008), Jamie Marks Is Dead (2016) and the BBC Three zombie drama In the Flesh (2013-2015)) showcase the isolation and alienation felt both from within and without certain queer sub-cultures and communities. Furthermore, films like The Nature of Nicholas (2002), and, more recently, Closet Monster (2015),demonstrate the impact of conservative familial repression on queer youth, resulting in the split between self and Other which is often visualised in monstrous form.
I want to suggest that these queer horror texts work to depict queerness as fragile and susceptible to mental anguish – particularly in relation to queer masculinity. The performative elements of these living and undead queer figures present themselves in the corporeal reality of their experience from panic attacks, self-harm, anxiety, ‘passing’ as normative, the use of therapy as a ‘cure’ and the marginalisation of the queer community.
Warning: This video essay contains scenes of violence, references to suicide, rape, self-harm and mental illness and contains some scenes of homophobic and queer-phobic violence.
It also contains scenes of gore, offensive language and sexually explicit moments.
Films included:
Carrie (De Palms, 1976)
Otto, or; Up With Dead People (La Bruce, 2008)
Jamie Marks is Dead (Smith, 2014)
The Nature of Nicholas (Erbach, 2002)
Killer Unicorn (Bolton, 2018)
The Wolves of Kromer (Gould, 1998)
Night of the Living Dead (Romero, 1968)
Gay Zombie (Simon, 2007)
Rift (Rökkur) (Thoroddsen, 2018)
The Quiet Room (Wineman, 2018)
Spiral (Harder, 2019)
It: Chapter Two (Muschietti, 2019)
LA Zombie (LaBruce, 2010)
Good Manners (Rojas and Dutra, 2018)
Hereditary (Aster, 2018)
Starfish (White, 2018)
The Haunting of Hill House (Netflix, 2018)
In the Flesh (BBC Three, 2013-14)
The Cured (Freyne, 2017)
Closet Monster (Dunn, 2015)
American Horror Story: Asylum (FX, 2012-13)
Soundtrack:
‘Atrocities’ by Antony and the Johnsons (2000) taken from the OST of Otto; or Up With Dead People (2008).
This Video Essay has been produced for educational purposes and is a transformative piece of work as conducted under the Fair Use Act, I do not own any of the images/music used herein.
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